No heavenly host – Great Hall 2 ceiling

Mock-ups, previews and decisions

I was looking for a grandiose ceiling to match the original half of the Hall – white with bronze crosses as seen above the chandelier. Something that smacked of either Medieval or Tudor/Jacobean. Plasterwork, or painted beams were what I had in mind.

My original choice had been to keep to a wood ceiling, using floor-boarding sheets as its basis, with painted beams across (a little like the plainer parts of the wonderful ceiling in St Cuthbert’s in Wells, Somerset but leaving out theHeavenly Host). Squares of beam pattern would give a simpler mirror to the floor tiles, if red, gold/amber and green were used on the beams.

I then came across Angela Downton’s screen panels, which, funnily enough, I was buying to use for a screen. I was struck that, although it would not achieve the same goal as the wood effect, the laser cut items would save me from messing up the beam painting by confining the paint to a background peeking through .

I scanned in a strip of motifs, along with suitably sized bits of wood, and used PSPro to build a scale mock-up of a possible layout. It was then offered up as the ceiling in the ongoing Great Hall construction, with liberal amounts of white tack behind the A4 sheets. The paint effect behind the motifs is a cerulean blue.

It creates a great ceiling, very dignified and, as long as it has wood beams between motifs, it fits in right across the wide timeframe. It’s such a great effect it possibly needs a plainer setting to show it off. Or, more likely I really will have to paint something on the beams to echo the flooring – a candy stripe of red and green perhaps?

A very soothing look - bit smart for this room?

Good effect. Possibly an over egged pudding?

Result of mock-up:

A great deal lighter than the original plan (though could have ‘limed’ the floor-boards between painted joists to lighten the look if it were a wood ceiling)

Dramatic – but not certain yet that it’s going in the right room.

If not here, then where?

The upper room over the Great Hall up the spiral stair. This is a sort of sitting room for the men but has sleeping cots for Guild members passing through town.

The Solar and/or mini Chapel space

One of the larger rooms in the roof space. This area is quite big and one of the rooms at this level is a further private room for members of the extended family.